Since the late 1970s, the orthodox view of complex 'that' phrases (e.g., 'that woman
eating a granola bar') has been that they are contextually sensitive devices of direct reference. In
Complex Demonstratives, Jeffrey King challenges that orthodoxy, showing that quantificational
accounts not only are as effective as direct reference accounts but also handle a wider range of
data.After providing arguments against direct reference accounts of 'that' phrases and developing a
quantificational theory of them, King looks at the interaction of 'that' phrases with modal
operators, negation, and verbs of propositional attitude. He argues for evidence of scope
interaction between 'that' phrases and other scoped elements. King also addresses semantic
properties of 'that' and other determiners, and the possibility of extending the semantics of 'that'
phrases to 'that' as a syntactically simple demonstrative. Finally, he argues against what he calls
ambiguity approaches, theories that hold that the various uses of 'that' phrases cannot be treated
by a single semantical theory.